Hopefully they are going to restart the Stargate franchise now :-)
Be careful what you wish for.
Amazon acquires MGM for $8.5B
251–260 of 844 posts
Re: Amazon acquires MGM for $8.5B
#252Earlier quoted context omitted.
How about something legal instead?
piracy and the subsequent success of platforms like steam and spotify prove time and again that it boils down to a delivery issue, not a human desire for illegal sourcing. Same issue with sports streaming. Why pay six different services to watch a 720p legal stream when i can watch a stream from Russia in 1080p with questionable ads?
Yes. A single service, with a single bill, that makes available every movie, TV show, or album ever produced. That's it. If you can provide this you can have my money.
This is not a technical problem anymore. It's a business problem. The company who can make these nebulous "licensing problems" and "distribution rights issues" go away can make a fortune. I don't care that Company A can't distribute the digital version of Company B's product because Company C has the exclusive rights to it and Company D only has a license with Company A to distribute optical discs. That shouldn't be something the end user has to worry about or be limited by. These media execs are so smart, why can't they untangle this problem?
I'm not going to subscribe to a dozen different services each with their own bill, their own account, their own password, their own rules and terms. Easier to hoist the Jolly Roger and move on with my life.
Re: Amazon acquires MGM for $8.5B
#253Earlier quoted context omitted.
> But fortunately the Internet came along Yes, that’s the difference. There used to be a gatekeeper to reaching your audience, but now there is none. A kid can take their 4K phone and make their own TV show with their friends and distribute it worldwide, or a company can get a professional crew and spend a couple billion dollars and distribute it worldwide. If the contention is that a few companies owning all the con…
> Yes, that’s the difference. There used to be a gatekeeper to reaching your audience, but now there is none. A kid can take their 4K phone and make their own TV show with their friends and distribute it worldwide, or a company can get a professional crew and spend a couple billion dollars and distribute it worldwide. Until Google or Facebook decide that your content is objectionable. Don't worry, punishment is insta…
Would you rather a business such as Google and Facebook not be able to do what they want with their computers and bandwidth?
No one is entitled to someone else’s computing resources. But unless the ISP is blocking access to your computers or from you to the network, then the point is the barrier to distribution is at its lowest in any point in history.
Ideally, we’d have ipv6 and fiber connections to home so Google/Facebook would be irrelevant. But that is a governance issue, not a Google/Facebook issue.
Re: Amazon acquires MGM for $8.5B
#254This makes it very likely that the beloved Stargate franchise will return as an Amazon Prime exclusive franchise, which will be great news for those of us like myself with appetite for 60+ more seasons of that show (after the 17 seasons that have already been made). I watched the sci-fi show "The Expanse" on Amazon Prime Video. Season 4 (the one made by Amazon Prime Video) felt like it had a tenth of the budget compa…
I started watching SG1 again (I saw it incomplete as a kid). It’s incredibly good. It pushes rationalism and feminism in a sane way that I’m not sure would happen in today’s environment. It’s incredibly rich in historical references and concepts. It’s rarely dumb and often preempts cliches. It’s still worth watching imho (and is much less known that Star Trek in US).
I recently finished a rewatch of it. It has held up far better than it has any right to. One thing that’s really stood out to me is the insane amount of technology change that happened over SG-1 — the show ran from 1996 to 2004. It went from laughable 3D CG on a Showtime budget, CRTs and landlines to heavy CG on a SciFi Channel budget, flatscreens and tiny cell phones.
It does have its dumb moments though. Basically anything involving real-world weapons or explosives. There were also a few weak seasons in the middle, and it’s pretty obvious the main cast started phoning it in around season 5. But on the whole I agree, it’s one of the best Sci Fi shows ever made and absolutely belongs with the best of Trek.
Re: Amazon acquires MGM for $8.5B
#255So what we're seeing is a repeat of the film industry from 1930's-1950's. You want to see a Paramount movie, you must go to a Paramount theater. Today you want to watch an Apple show you must go to Apple's VOD. We could really use laws that force, once again, some sort of separation between production and distribution. Better stuff gets made in this kind of ecosystem.
> Better stuff gets made in this kind of ecosystem. Are we not currently living in a content golden age? Is there any measure of quality and quantity now vs the past? It feels like there's a new amazing mini series and movie and show every week.
This, in my opinion really depends on the content you consume, where you consume it and how you pay for it. Some types of content in competitive ecosystems, are thriving and flourishing. Other types, in large vertically organized systems, are languishing. Only time will tell, but for instance, it has been a really long time since I have seen a memorable film or tv show that truly stands out in my mind as something that will stand the test of time. And the best stuff can be found in obscure distribution channels while the worst stuff gets over financed and over promoted. But that has always been the story hasn’t it, so it’s tricky to make assessments as we only remember the best examples from the past. Certainly, more people than ever can make some thing and then rapidly deliver it to their audience and this is a good thing, even if there are fewer Stanley Kubricks around.
Re: Amazon acquires MGM for $8.5B
#256Earlier quoted context omitted.
Piracy was the Easiest/Only way to get content until ~2008ish. Since then; Netflix and (...x streaming platform) made it easier/better to Pay for the content than pirate it. It does feel like we're approaching a tipping point now in the other direction with all of these streaming fiefdoms. My household has Netflix, Hulu, D+, and Prime streaming now - that's already too many and needs pairing IMO.
Cable providers were charging you $80/mo for commercial laden network aggregation. You cut that cord and complain when paying less for more content, without commercials, and is on demand, because it is unbundled and you need to manage each $5-15 "network" fee individually, instead of a single itemized bill. This is like complaining you have to pay for NBC to watch Friends when you'd much prefer to watch it on ABC so…
We never paid for networks, we paid for a handful of shows that were worth watching, which happened to be on different channels because physics.
Now they are on different platforms, because no good reason at all.
A copyright holder of a creative work should be able to set the price, but should not be able to use their monopolistic powers to control who pays the price. Let each channel decide if they want to buy a given show at a given price.
Re: Amazon acquires MGM for $8.5B
#257> The deal can be viewed as a doubling down on business strategy that Jeff Bezos, Amazon’s CEO, articulated at a conference in 2016: “When we win a Golden Globe, it helps us sell more shoes,” he had said, referring to Amazon's diverse business divisions. This part is a real nugget.
That blew my mind. We have so much sci-fi depicting the evil mega-corp that's it has become a trope, yet we're just lumbering along towards that exact future.
And the “evil mega-Corp” will gladly sell you that sci-fi in whichever medium you prefer. Hell, they’ll even recommend it to you.
Re: Amazon acquires MGM for $8.5B
#258Earlier quoted context omitted.
> We could really use laws that force, once again, some sort of separation between production and distribution. Piracy is competition to bad content behavior. It's a meaningful consumer response to monopoly, balkanization and other anti-consumer practices.
We for the most part have exponentially more and better content in tv and film, and for MUCH cheaper and with more convenience than 10-15 years ago. But still people insist that they must pirate because the "studios" for some amorphous reason related to preexisting hatred of corporations or whatever. Some people would just prefer to not pay for shit I guess. I just wish they'd be more honest about it than the mental…
> But still people insist that they must pirate because the "studios" for some amorphous reason related to preexisting hatred of corporations or whatever.
This is not a good faith reading or interpretation. The frustration is in the fragmentation; having to subscribe to multiple services to get the content you want because it's otherwise siloed.
Hitting that point - having to subscribe to 3 or more services to get a small subset of that service's offerings is driving people back to piracy.
Re: Amazon acquires MGM for $8.5B
#259Earlier quoted context omitted.
> We could really use laws that force, once again, some sort of separation between production and distribution. Piracy is competition to bad content behavior. It's a meaningful consumer response to monopoly, balkanization and other anti-consumer practices.
Asking for a friend of course, but what would be the best setup for a Netflix/Prime/...-like experience for own media for a family of not-too-digitally-savvy users? That friend uses Kodi (and a NAS) now, but it's still a bit arduous to use for his family. She wants profiles, availability on any device over wifi and 4G and movies and series only.
Plex and Sonarr is a great place to start.
Re: Amazon acquires MGM for $8.5B
#260MGM itself was formed from a merger: MGM was formed in 1924 when the entertainment entrepreneur Marcus Loew gained control of Metro Pictures, Goldwyn Pictures, and Louis B. Mayer Pictures.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer